Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a method for encoding/decoding images and an apparatus using the method; and more particularly, a method for encoding/decoding images employing inter-color component prediction and an apparatus using the method.
Discussion of the Related Art
The continuous expansion of information and communication industry has caused worldwide spread of High Definition (HD) broadcasting services. Now many users have become accustomed to high resolution, high quality images, and a large number of organizations are speeding up development of the next-generation display devices to meet the demand of the public for high quality broadcasting services. Besides the HDTV, as people are paying great attention to Full HD (FHD) and Ultra High Definition (UHD) TV providing an image resolution four or more times the resolution of HDTV, an image encoding/decoding technology for images with higher resolution and higher quality is needed more than ever.
To carry out encoding/decoding images of higher resolution and quality, a method and an apparatus for encoding/decoding images can employ an inter-prediction technique predicting pixel values of a current picture from temporarily preceding and/or succeeding pictures; an intra-prediction technique predicting pixel values of a current picture by using pixel information of the current picture; and an entropy encoding technique allocating a short code to the symbol with a high frequency and a long code to the symbol with a low frequency.
However, a method and an apparatus for encoding/decoding images in the prior art does not take into account the correlation between inter-color components, and accordingly, the conventional method and apparatus for image encoding/decoding caused degradation of image encoding/decoding efficiency.